A national campaign to collect women’s papers is now under way. The Manuscript Collection of the National and University Library of Iceland, the National Archives of Iceland, the Women’s History Archives and regional archives all over the country want to use the centenary of women’s suffrage to draw attention to the fact that far fewer women’s papers than men’s reach the archives.
The private archive of Jóna Margrét Tómasdóttir (1913–2005) is one of the collections that have come to the Manuscript Collection through the campaign. Jóna Margrét was a housewife in Reykjavík and also worked as a seamstress.
The collection holds various verses by Jóna Margrét and others. Much of it is jotted down on slips of paper of all kinds. The collection also holds notebooks Jóna Margrét used to keep track of the sewing courses she taught. There is also a travel diary, letters and a talk entitled “When I got caught up in the ‘Situation'”. The talk was given at Hótel Saga on 19 April 1991 and tells of Icelandic women’s encounters with American soldiers.
Among the items now on show in a small exhibition in the Library is a diary from 1991, in which Jóna Margrét wrote verses for every day. Over the next few weeks the diary’s pages will be turned so that each day’s verse can be read.
